History of “Oxford English Dictionary”

In 21st centaury there are many dictionaries available in the market. But today’s lifestyle everyone have internet access in their mobile, so they don’t prefer book dictionary. Today’s generation do not care about what they speak and what the meaning of their speaking is. Before the Internet-Computer era, there was a big demand of dictionaries.

In early 1800 British people have their own lexicon (i.e. dictionaries), but they did not stay in one country. They started war with different countries and also they won many countries in the world. So, after some year later they need to upgrade their dictionary. Because of that in 1857, in London Philological Society decide to make one universal dictionary. At that time they could not find any suitable person who was capable to do that work. Because of that, work of dictionary did not progress. Some 22 years later in 1879 Scottish philologist Sir James Augustus Henry Murray (also a lexicographer) took that work.

After 5 years because of Henry Murray’s assiduous, Philological Society launched first part of dictionary. Henry Murray was till acquisition until his death. When he died, they prepared 7200 pages and at that time the Society named of the dictionary was ‘The Oxford Dictionary’. After that, Society decided to launch 4 volume of dictionary which contains approx 6400 pages. Day by day the splendor of English language was increasing. So it’s difficult to complete the dictionary. In 1928 the work of Oxford Dictionary was completed. The final dictionary contains about 15640 pages so the society decided that launch the dictionary in 10 Volume.

No, no, no the work of Oxford Dictionary was not completed here, but it was actually started from that time. After the first launch of dictionary new and new words were founded. Because of this the society decided that to upgrade their dictionary by adding those new words. In 21st centaury we often find some news in Newspaper or on TV channel that the new words were added in to The Oxford Dictionary. Today, The Oxford Dictionary has many volumes. But common person do not need every volume of dictionary. So, they made different types of volume of dictionary. So they made different types of volumes like for student, for philologist etc.

But in this computer era, nobody likes to carry this heavy stuff from one place to another which contains 20 volumes with 68 kg weight. So the Society decides to make the CDs (Compact Disc) of the dictionary. But in computer era, they have to make this dictionary online. No doubt it’s not a good decision for the people and also for the Society. The oxford is the one of the biggest dictionary of language. There are more than 7.5 hundred thousand words in the dictionary. People may also send some new words to the dictionary, then the Society check the word and if it’s really new then they set this word in the dictionary. Alexander Bailey gave the thirty thousand words to the dictionary. Shakespeare gave more bestow in English language. From the Shakespeare’s texts, 33 000 sentences are use in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Dictionary contains not only words but also pronunciation, grammar-rules, idioms-phrases etc. Fifty proof readers check dictionary continuously with the accuracy. After 99 years later in 2010, one mistake was captured in the dictionary. The third addition of the dictionary will probably appear in electronic form only. The Oxford dictionary is considered as the best dictionary in the world..!!